Dar es Salaam BRT: City Center Street Typology

In as complex an urban environment as central Dar es Salaam, streets have multiple functions. They allow cars, daladalas and other vehicles to access buildings and pass through the centre. They allow trucks to make deliveries. They provide space for parking and loading. They are the places where people walk. And streets provide some of the city centre’s few open spaces – places for residents, shop owners, employees and visitors to socialize, interact and relax.

At present, most city centre streets are designed in a similar fashion, and cater to cars and trucks, pedestrians, parking and in some cases, daladalas. In most cases, they perform none of these functions particularly well. They are difficult for cars to navigate; and walkways are narrow and frequently blocked by vendors or parked cars.

This chapter recommends a new framework to manage city centre streets. It recognizes that each street cannot perform every function well. Instead, it allows them to focus on one or two core functions. This takes advantage of the circulation changes that will be required for DART construction – namely, reserving Morogoro Road for buses, and reversing the direction of Samora Avenue. However, it goes further in proposing that some streets be reserved for pedestrians, and that some focus on the movement of vehicle traffic.

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